Not going to help much either but I use enterprise level version of them for a couple of production databases..... Hard to argue with the results I see... Fast even when compared to big disk arrays with big caches - although not a panacea as depend on the types of accesses... but then there is no spinning stuff, so not really a fair compare :-)

I believe there are 2 types and one has a better life... they only have so many read/write cycles in them. You probably noticed thy ain't exactly cheap yet :-)

I see the odd person doing it for the windoze partition and I see positive comments. I think most of them move the windows cache to another device and just leave the program installs on it.

Not going to help much either but I use enterprise level version of them for a couple of production databases..... Hard to argue with the results I see... Fast even when compared to big disk arrays with big caches - although not a panacea as depend on the types of accesses... but then there is no spinning stuff, so not really a fair compare :-)

I believe there are 2 types and one has a better life... they only have so many read/write cycles in them. You probably noticed thy ain't exactly cheap yet :-)

I see the odd person doing it for the windoze partition and I see positive comments. I think most of them move the windows cache to another device and just leave the program installs on it.

I'm wondering about getting a high-end laptop (Dell-Alienware) with SSD. I didn't know they had limited r/w cycles. I definitely don't like the sound of that.
Thanks!

The new MacBook Air models also come with SSHD. The big advantage of them in a portable device is safety from damage when they are moved or dropped. In a desktop you would probably only need one if you have speed-intensive applications like editing video.

I didn't know they had limited r/w cycles. I definitely don't like the sound of that.
Thanks!

Just like a memory card or a flashdrive. It's a lot of read/write cycles, but a drive in your computer gets written to a lot more frequently than a memory card, which is why most folks just install the OS and apps on it and put variable data on a traditional drive.

ive talked to someone who stored most of their data on firewire 800 raid drives and had a small (~64-128)Gb SSD in the laptop so when he wanted to edit he saved temp files/working files to the SSD. it was damn fast although i can see how many people would want a simpler system

Not going to help much either but I use enterprise level version of them for a couple of production databases..... Hard to argue with the results I see... Fast even when compared to big disk arrays with big caches - although not a panacea as depend on the types of accesses... but then there is no spinning stuff, so not really a fair compare :-)

I believe there are 2 types and one has a better life... they only have so many read/write cycles in them. You probably noticed thy ain't exactly cheap yet :-)

I see the odd person doing it for the windoze partition and I see positive comments. I think most of them move the windows cache to another device and just leave the program installs on it.

Agreed -- I don't think they're affordable enough to deploy them into a non-enterprise production.
Whilst more reliable than spinning drives, and certainly faster, I'd question how much you're actually missing out on.
How fast is your current HDD?
If you're using an old laptop to edit HD video, it would probably cost you less to upgrade the laptop to a suitable specification than purchasing a solid state drive large enough to hold HD videos.

Not going to help much either but I use enterprise level version of them for a couple of production databases..... Hard to argue with the results I see... Fast even when compared to big disk arrays with big caches - although not a panacea as depend on the types of accesses... but then there is no spinning stuff, so not really a fair compare :-)

I believe there are 2 types and one has a better life... they only have so many read/write cycles in them. You probably noticed thy ain't exactly cheap yet :-)

I see the odd person doing it for the windoze partition and I see positive comments. I think most of them move the windows cache to another device and just leave the program installs on it.

Agreed -- I don't think they're affordable enough to deploy them into a non-enterprise production.
Whilst more reliable than spinning drives, and certainly faster, I'd question how much you're actually missing out on.
How fast is your current HDD?
If you're using an old laptop to edit HD video, it would probably cost you less to upgrade the laptop to a suitable specification than purchasing a solid state drive large enough to hold HD videos.

My current HD is 7200rpm. I'm no laptop tech, but I think the mobo is at the end of possibilities of upgrading the CPU, which is limiting my software choices. I actually tried installing a more recent version of Adobe Premiere Elements as an upgrade from my current, old version, as I'm right AT the limit. The software installed, but can't run, ha.

When I last rebuilt our machines I put in SSDs for the system drives; Windows 7 and all the apps live on it and the difference is hard to overstate. Win7 boots fully in a few seconds; apps don't load, they just open. Easily the best performance increase for the money that I've seen for years.

When I last rebuilt our machines I put in SSDs for the system drives; Windows 7 and all the apps live on it and the difference is hard to overstate. Win7 boots fully in a few seconds; apps don't load, they just open. Easily the best performance increase for the money that I've seen for years.

How much SSD did you had used for above application? Do you recommend to use SSD as scratch disk for photoshop instead increasing the application opening/loading time?

If you're thinking of upgrading components, your performance increase depends totally on where your bottleneck currently is, but if you're buying a new system, you'll notice a big speed increase with a SSD drive.
Whether it going to make editing video a breeze, is another question--rendering full HD files maxes out most systems.
(I'm running with two Intel X25-M's @ 225MB/s throughput each)

I've been toying with the prospect of replacing the RAID array which I use for my OS & apps. It's a pair of 80GB 7200 RPM 80GB drives in RAID 0, and it tops out around 160MB/s sustained throughput. Some of the newer SSD options could put me closer to 500MB/s, with a lot lower latency.
Pricing is still keeping me away, though. I can easily afford it, but I don't consider it a wise use of funds. I expect that within 12 to 24 months, price & performance will be at a point where I will be making the jump.

Pricing is still keeping me away, though. I can easily afford it, but I don't consider it a wise use of funds. I expect that within 12 to 24 months, price & performance will be at a point where I will be making the jump.

Yeah, right now SSDs are all the rage. I'd wait for the novelty to wear off a bit, and the longevity/reliability of the drives to improve.

I added one to my last PC as a data drive for my XML files (which I do a lot of postprocessing on). Increased the speed of my processing by a factor of 10. I bought a larger one for my newer computer...but I haven't installed it yet because my new computer unfortunately doesn't have a lot of expansion space or extra SATA ports (actually, I have one extra port...and I don't mind leaving the drive sitting on the bottom of the case in a small ICE cage I bought...but I want to install two!